Adj. When pronounced "BOO-zhee" (soft-j sound like in French) refers to a quality of (sometimes mildly) snobby-without-realizing-it, upper-middle-class sensibilities. Usually associated with upper-middle-income white people, but not necessarily. Can involve driving the right car, getting the right (healthy or gourmet) foods, having a professional/white-collar job, always having "nice" things, $4 lattes at Starbucks or elsewhere because you think you're above Starbucks, having a well-diversified stock portfolio and other retirement savings, having a special set of dishes and everything else just for Christmas, status-symbol kids or pets, carbon offsets, thinking $15 wine is cheap, listening to NPR, and gentrifying neighborhoods. Even though not all of these things may be bad and some of them could be done by anybody (like healthy food or looking down on Starbucks), it's a certain combination and a certain attitude that goes along with it that you know when you see. As with many type-of-people-describing things, there can be some overlap with other things, yuppy stuff and hipster stuff especially (although hipsters tend to be associated with 20-somethings, and yuppies tend to be younger-middle-age; bourgeois has more of an association with younger-middle-age-thru-older-middle-age); can be distinguished from super-rich stuff; some people might do bourgeois things occasionally or do things in a bourgeois way, but some people are just bourgeois and usually don't realize it.

This neighborhood used to be a lively working-class Latino neighborhood, but then all these yuppies moved in cause it was close to downtown and was actually a pretty cool neighborhood, and now there's all these bourgeois shops and cafes everywhere and everyone's property values went up.

He likes to pretend he's all poor and disadvantaged and shops at Wal-Mart and stuff, but we all know he came from this total bourgeois background and his bourgeois parents support him still.

When I became a teacher, I wanted to teach at the high school I graduated from, but I ended up at this preppy magnet school in a bourgeois-ass suburb.

According to Karl Marx, there were only two classes: those controlling the means of power and those not. The bourgeois were those who controlled the political system, creating laws and values that would ensure their control of power over the proletariat working class.

The bourgeois Board of Trustees at the College of St. Benedict are trying to make us live on campus all four years, what a violation of freedom!

According to Karl Marx, there were only two classes: those controlling the means of power and those not. The bourgeois were those who controlled the political system, creating laws and values that would ensure their control of power over the proletariat working class.

The bourgeois Board of Trustees at the College of St. Benedict are trying to make us live on campus all four years, what a violation of freedom!